To my dearest daughter,
Now that you are ten, I want to write to you about something that is important to me. Have you ever wondered how we know the things that we know? How do we know, for instance, that the stars, which look like tiny pinpricks in the sky, are really huge balls of fire like the Sun and very far away? And how do we know that the Earth is a smaller ball whirling round one of those stars, the Sun?
The answer to these questions is ‘evidence’.
Sometimes evidence means actually seeing (or hearing, feeling, smelling….) that something is true. Astronauts have traveled far enough from the Earth to see with their own eyes that it is round. Sometimes our eyes need help. The ‘evening star’ looks like a bright twinkle in the sky but with a telescope you can see that it is a beautiful ball — the planet we call Venus. Something that you learn by direct seeing (or hearing or feeling…) is called an observation.
Often evidence isn’t just observation on its own, but observation always lies at the back of it. If there’s been a murder, often nobody (except the murderer and the dead person!) actually observed it. But detectives can gather together lots of other observations which may all point towards a particular suspect. If a person’s fingerprints match those found on a dagger, this is evidence that he touched it. It doesn’t prove that he did the murder, but it can help when it’s joined up with lots of other evidence. Sometimes a detective can think about a whole lot of observations and suddenly realize that they all fall into place and make sense if so-and-so did the murder.

Scientists — the specialists in discovering what is true about the world and the universe — often work like detectives. They make a guess (called a hypothesis) about what might be true. They then say to themselves: if that were really true, we ought to see so-and-so. This is called a prediction. For example, if the world is really round, we can predict that a traveler, going on and on in the same direction, should eventually find himself back where he started. When a doctor says that you have measles he doesn’t take one look at you and see measles. His first look gives him a hypothesis that you may have measles. Then he says to himself: if she really has measles, I ought to see… Then he runs through his list of predictions and tests them with his eyes (have you got spots?), his hands (is your forehead hot?), and his ears (does your chest wheeze in a measly way?). Only then does he make his decision and say, ‘I diagnose that the child has measles.’ Sometimes doctors need to do other tests like blood tests or X-rays, which help their eyes, hands and ears to make observations.

ut perhaps the most moving part of his letter deals with love,
exploring the difference between naming feelings with concrete labels
and intuiting them from the living fabric, the “evidence,” of
experience:

People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings
deep inside, otherwise you’d never be confident of things like ‘My wife
loves me’. But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence
that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody
who loves you, you see and hear lots of little tidbits of evidence, and
they all add up. It isn’t purely inside feeling, like the feeling that
priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside
feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and
kindnesses; this is all real evidence.

Inside feelings are valuable in science too, but only for
giving you ideas that you later test by looking for evidence. A
scientist can have a ‘hunch’ about an idea that just ‘feels’ right. In
itself, this is not a good reason for believing something. But it can be
a good reason for spending some time doing a particular experiment, or
looking in a particular way for evidence. Scientists use inside feelings
all the time to get ideas. But they are not worth anything until they
are supported by evidence.

After returning to the perils of tradition, Dawkins concludes with some practical advise reminiscent of the Baloney Detection Kit:

What can we do about all this? It is not easy for you to
do anything, because you are only ten. But you could try this. Next time
somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself:
‘Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of
evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of
tradition, authority or revelation?’ And, next time somebody tells you
that something is true, why not say to them: ‘What kind of evidence is
there for that?’ And if they can’t give you a good answer, I hope you’ll
think very carefully before you believe a word they say.
Your loving,
Daddy

Tuesday

Over a dozen people in ten countries have been arrested for acts of
"blasphemy" on social media networks this year, according to the
International Humanist and Ethical Union.

Their new report,
which the organization describes as the first of its kind, takes a
closer look at freedom of conscience laws in 60 countries around the
world, including Canada. It has tracked, among other things, an uptick
in the number of non-religious people being targeted for their
activities on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

"As
more people are able to share their thoughts with a public audience, it
seems that more people are able to take offense at those thoughts and to
provide public proof of them," the authors note, adding that some
governments even go after those who "like" or re-tweet other people's
posts.

Since 1952, the [IHEU] umbrella organization has sought to promote human rights
and humanist values around the world and represent the views of more
than 100 humanist, atheist, rationalist, secularist, and freethought
organizations from 40 countries.

The group highlights several specific cases, including that of an
Egyptian teen sentenced to three years in jail for posting "blasphemous"
cartoons online and a Greek man charged with "insulting religion" after
creating a Facebook page that poked fun at believing in miracles.

This
trend of prosecuting blasphemies on social media sites, they note, is
"most marked" - but not exclusive to - Muslim majority countries.

"Across the world the reactionary impulse to punish new ideas,
or in some cases the merest expression of disbelief, recurs again and
again," the report's editor, Matt Cherry, said in a statement.

But social media isn't the only arena in which non-religious people are met with hostility or outright violence.
The report also argues that non-believers are increasingly being
targeted by groups who seek to ban them from raising children, marrying
believers and entering politics, among other things. The organization
says atheists could even face execution in Afghanistan, Iran, Maldives,
Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

While the report notes that Canada's constitution and legal
system largely protect freedom of belief, the authors take issue with
public funding of religious, largely Roman Catholic schools - some of
which they say discriminate against qualified but non-religious teachers
or can exclude non-religious students.

Monday

The Continuum of Humanist Education // Current TV
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Saturday

World AIDS Day is on December 1, 2012. It brings together people from around the world to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS. Leading up to this annual observance is the Canadian HIV/AIDS Awareness Week (November 24 – December 1). Communities from across the country will be hosting events and/or activities to commemorate the importance behind the day. The goal – to increase awareness on the continued struggles as well as to highlight the perpetual hope for a cure. It is a demonstration of international solidarity in the face of this pandemic. World AIDS Day is also an opportunity for public and private partners to advocate and shepherd continued progress in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care for people living with the disease around the world.

World AIDS Day is dedicated to the memories of those who have lost their battle to the disease but also to honour those who continue to live with it. The day also celebrates the amount of progress already achieved in the global response to HIV/AIDS.

This is an informal blog by the UofT Humanist Chaplains, for University of Toronto Secular, Ethical, and Humanist students and scholars, alumni, faculty and staff. We welcome comments and interaction, and you can also contact us by phone and email: see the MEET US page at the top.